Publica.io Acquires Publica.com

About a week ago, Sedo reported the sale of Publica.com, which sold via its platform for $75,000. Although it is very early in the year, the sale currently ranks as the second largest public sale of the year on the DNJ sales chart. Had it closed in 2017, it would have ranked in the top 100 public domain name sales last year.

I was monitoring the Whois information to see who took possession of the domain name after it left Sedo’s escrow account. Although the Whois information is private so the registrant is not known for certain, it looks like the company that operates Publica.io acquired Publica.com. If you visit Publica.com, you will be forwarded to the Publica.io website. Publica is “an ICO and platform for publishing books in the blockchain era.”

According to CoinMarketCap.com, a website that covers the cryptocurrency market, I believe Publica’s ICO has a market cap of nearly $30 million USD. At the time of publication, each token (PBL) trades at $1.61 USD. Earlier this month, each PBL was trading at over $4.25 USD. It looks like it traded as low as $.14 USD late last year.

From my perspective, acquiring the exact match .com domain name is a smart move when operating on an alternative extension (assuming this company acquired the domain name). Whether the business intends to move to the .com or use it as a defensive measure, it is better to own the exact match .com domain name.

One thing I am curious about was whether any cryptocurrency was involved in this particular deal. A few weeks ago, Sedo CEO Tobias Flaitz told me the company already supports “closing a deal where the Seller agrees being paid by the Buyer in Cryptocurrency, no matter which one.” It would be interesting to know whether this deal involved any PBL or other cryptocurrency, which would change the current value of the deal.

Thanks to Gregg for mentioning this to me.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

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